Almost everyone has experienced the annoyance of using a tape cutter where the free end of the tape slips back onto and sticks to the roll of tape, thus making it difficult to find and retrieve the free end. For tape cutters used for occasional personal use, this may be merely an annoyance. However, for tape cutters used in commercial applications, this can result in significant inefficiencies.
There are many known and patented devices for dispensing and cutting material. Many of these devices are core mounted devices for dispensing and cutting tape. Applicant's prior patents, U.S. Pat. Des. Nos. 299,036 and 4,711,384 are generally representative of the basic structure and operation of core mounted, one-piece tape cutters. Applicant's prior patents do not include, however, any element which serves to restrain or trap the free end of the tape. Most prior known tape cutters merely rely on the tape sticking to the blade or a support area to try to keep the free end ready for use. In addition to applicant's prior patents, other core mounted tape cutters are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,677,425; 2,717,641; 2,734,575; and 3,684,141. None of these prior known core mounted tape cutters, however, provide effective means for preventing the free end of the tape from being withdrawn onto and sticking to the roll of tape.
There are a number of known devices which have tried to solve the problem of maintaining the free end of tape in an operative position. These devices, however, either are not core mounted tape dispensers, or involve complex structures which are expensive to manufacture and difficult to operate. For example, Handler, U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,351, discloses a box for flexible sheet material such as plastic wrap. The box includes a flap which serves as a "biasing means" for pressing the sheet material into light frictional contact with an abrasive element within the box. The frictional contact between the resilient flap and the abrasive material is sufficiently great that the new free end, created when a portion of the sheet material is severed by cutting, is restrained from reentering the box. Of course, this device is not a tape mounted cutter.
Holoff, U.S. Pat. No. 4,344,813, discloses a complex tape dispenser in which a leaf spring causes a tape support bar to press a tape gripping member against a guide wall thereby pinching the tape tightly between the tape gripping bar and the tape support bar. This structure, however, is complex and expensive to manufacture.
Schleicher, U.S. Pat. No. 4,238,272, discloses a tape dispenser in which a leaf spring having a lower arm is resiliently biased to pinch the free end of the tape against an edge of an opening in the tape dispenser. The protruding end portion of the tape acts in a self-starting capacity for the next tape dispensing operation. This device also is not a simple core-mounted device, but is a housing which fully encloses the tape.
Thus, there is no known effective and inexpensive tape cutter which retains the free end of tape in operative position.